Climate Politics

Los Angelenos narrowly reject city-wide solar plan

Los Angeles voters yesterday rejected the Green Energy Good Jobs ballot initiative (AKA Measure B), according unofficial results from the city clerk’s office. The plan, which failed by about 1,000 votes, would have led to the installation of thousands of solar panels on rooftops and parking lots throughout the city. It would have required the […]

Obama’s budget would cut subsidies to oil companies and change transport funding

With all the buzz last week about the climate plan and green spending incorporated into President Obama’s proposed budget, we almost missed a few other environmental aspects. The budget also kills funding for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, as David noted, and it cuts subsidies for Big Oil and changes how transportation funds are […]

The NYT asks: are we shaming our politicians about their lifestyles enough?

Eager to find new ways to trivialize the warming of the planet, the New York Times has been reporting on the carbon footprint of individual politicians and legislatures.

They are abetted in this effort by Terra Eco, a French environmental magazine that has calculated British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's footprint to be -- quelle horreur! -- 8,400 tons of CO2 per year. By my calcs, that's about 0.0001 percent of America's carbon footprint, so as soon as Brown buys a bicycle, we should have the climate problem pretty well licked.

In the meantime, I applaud Terra Eco's work on this important issue, and look forward to their upcoming report on the size of Al Gore's swimming pool.

EPA to host public hearing on the California waiver

The Environmental Protection Agency will host a public hearing this week on California’s request for a waiver to set tougher tailpipe emissions standards. The hearing will be held on Thursday, March 5, in Arlington, Va. It is part of the public comment process on their decision to reconsider the state’s petition. Here are the deets, […]

Sen. Menendez holds up science appointees to get leverage on Cuba policy

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) is reportedly holding up the confirmation of two of President Obama’s top science nominees, both of whom are expected to play key roles on climate policy. Menendez has no complaints about the qualifications of the two — physicist John Holdren, nominated to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology […]

WaPo confirms influence of Obama's top economic advisers; climate policy suffers

There was a time (er, last week) when I was mocked for lamenting the influence of Obama's top economic advisers on climate policy. I still think I'll have the last laugh. Or cry, as the case may be.

This is from a story by David Cho, just out in the Washington Post, about the extraordinary influence of Summers and Geithner in the administration:

The influence of their partnership was also evident during the battle over the budget, which began weeks before Obama was sworn into office.

Meeting in January on the eighth floor of the transition team's office in downtown Washington, Geithner pressed the incoming president to commit to cutting the deficit to 3 percent of the economy over the next five years, which would keep the nation's debt roughly in line with normal economic growth. Summers quickly backed him.

Some, including economist Jared Bernstein, resisted, saying that such a strict limit would make it more difficult to confront the many challenges ahead and that the size of the government's emergency response to the economy and financial markets would make the cap tough to maintain.

In February, the entire economic team convened in the windowless Roosevelt Room in the White House. Obama abruptly ended the debate. Geithner and Summers would have their way.

"The two of them being together ended up being pretty decisive for President Obama," an administration official said.

Rubinite deficit hawkery is back! Super. Atrios dryly notes:

Jared Bernstein's the crazy liberal who might want to spend a few bucks on social programs. Meanwhile Larry and Tim are shoveling cash into the Banksters' pockets as fast as they can. But, you know, they're the ones who are "serious" about the deficit.

Summers, you'll recall, was credited with reducing the amount of infrastructure spending in the stimulus bill. Here's what Bernstein had to say [PDF] before Congress last year, arguing for substantially higher infrastructure spending:

E.U. confident Obama will follow its lead on climate change

BRUSSELS — The E.U. presidency is confident that the United States under President Barack Obama “will follow the leadership of the European Union”, by setting ambitious mid-term goals for cutting greenhouse gases. The 27 E.U. nations in December committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020 but have also agreed to increase […]

Obama's team shows it's unprepared to defend his cap-and-trade proposal

The president's surrogates are fanning out in the press to defend his budget proposals. To my eye, they're not doing a very good job defending the cap-and-trade system that was laid out in the budget.

Right now, the intellectual leader of the Republican Party, Newt Gingrich, is out bashing the cap-and-trade system as an "energy tax" on everyone who uses electricity or gasoline. This is entirely predictable -- it has been and will be the central attack on carbon pricing.

On The Week, Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag was pressed relentlessly by host George Stephanopoulos (the very essence of a Conservative Conventional Wisdom Delivery System [CCWDS]) to admit that the cap-and-trade system is a tax. Orszag kind of rambles around and concludes by saying yeah, it will raise energy costs, but overall, American families will come out ahead under Obama's budget. Which is fine, as far as it goes, though it ends up sound somewhat evasive and doesn't constitute a defense of the program at all.

For one thing, Orszag might try using the words "climate change." More specifically, in the budget Obama specifically tied carbon revenues to a payroll tax that would offset the rise in energy costs for the bottom 60 percent of American income earners. What was the point of doing that if not to have a specific and pointed rejoinder to douchebags like Gingrich? It's not just the overall budget that would benefit most American families, it's the carbon cap-and-trade system itself. (See also Jefferson Morley.)

Similarly, here's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel on Face the Nation (the energy bit comes about seven minutes in):

$80b per year in carbon revenue to go to clean energy, tax payer rebates

President Obama recently announced a plan to cut the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term, in part by raising revenue through the auctioning of carbon permits under a cap-and-trade system. In one sense, there's no new information here. Obama campaigned heavily on cap-and-trade and he's always favored auctioned permits, so the plan is just a restatement of some prior campaign pledges. Right?

Sort of, but this is still a very big deal. The new budget has at least four big implications.

The first is purely political. By including carbon revenue in his budget projections, Obama is not only presenting cap-and-trade as a fait accompli, he's also casting it as a matter of fiscal responsibility. Deficit reduction is the ultimate bipartisan fetish object, and with this announcement Obama has performed an effective flanking maneuver on opponents who are going to try to worry a climate bill to death over economic concerns. Don't get me wrong: the political battle over cap-and-trade will be bruising. But the rhetorical ground on which it will be fought just tilted more heavily in the favor of environmentalists.

Obama budget proposal would cut off funding for Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump

Here's one bit of news I missed in all the hubbub about Obama's proposed budget: apparently it kills Yucca Mountain dead, once and for all.

Here's what Harry Reid says on the Senate website:

Dear Fellow Nevadan-

Today was an extremely important day in our fight against the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. In his budget request for 2010, President Obama will announce plans to devise a new strategy to find another solution to deal with the nation's nuclear waste that does not include storing it in Nevada.

As Nevadans know, I have been successfully fighting the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump since I began my career in the Senate. I have had tremendous help from our state's leaders and thousands of Nevadans along the way. President Obama joined the fight against the nuclear waste dump in his Presidential campaign, and I am proud that now he will deliver on his promise.

President Obama has made a critical first step towards fulfilling his promise to end the Yucca Mountain project, and I could not be happier for the people of Nevada. Make no mistake: this represents a significant and lasting victory in our battle to protect Nevada from becoming the country's toxic wasteland. I have worked for over two decades with help from our state's leaders and thousands of Nevadans to stop Yucca Mountain. President Obama recognizes that the proposed dump threatens the health and safety of Nevadans and millions of Americans, and his commitment to stop this terrible project could not be more clear.